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Thursday, January 1, 2009

Sprouted Wheat Bread Day One

To kick off the new year, I thought I would start with day one. This is the 3 day tutorial for making home made bread just using the whole grains of wheat. No flour. You read that right. So if you want to start with me, grab yourself some hard white or red wheat. 6 cups for 2 loaves or 3 cups for 1 loaf and put it in a large bowl. Cover it with water and start it soaking. That is all we'll do today. See you tomorrow...for day two's tutorial. The bread is like regular wheat bread but with a gorgeous texture and a lot of character. So, let's get cracking!

You will need a sturdy food processor or meat grinder for the final step of bread making...so make sure you have one of the two in the next couple days.Also, the spouting time is pivotal. If you let the sprouts get too far developed, what you will have is a gooey mess, instead of bread it will be like a glue log. So, be sure to look at the pictures I do so you can gauge when your wheat needs to be made into bread. This may be shorter than 3 days if your wheat is especially fresh or your home or sprouting area is warm. The biggest test beside the picture is the TASTE test. If the wheat tastes starchy, it is still good for bread.If however it has a sweetness to it, then you know that the sprouts have gone too long. These sprouts are good in small amount (1/4 cup chopped) in regular bread to add to the yeast activity, but in larger quantity will, again, give you a gummy gooey log. Taste the sprouts. Watch them. If in doubt, make the dough at the end of day 2, even if you don't see any sprouts coming out the end. Or, at the end of day 2, put them right in the fridge and grind first thing in the morning.

Don't know where to get whole grain online? These guys are awesome...and they ship for a "song". I don't work for them.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Well, I tried the sprouted bread today and my loaves sure didn't look as nice as yours! I'm not sure if the wheat was too sprouted or what. They didn't really rise too much, just kind of spread out in the bread tins. I tried the food processor method first and that kinda turned into a really sticky texture. I left that batch in the bowl but noticed later that it did rise so I baked it in a round shape on a cookie sheet.The other loaves were ground in the kitchenaid meat grinder and kneaded in there as well. They made a nice ball and it looked like the gluten had developed but like I said, they didn't really rise much. I have them in the plastic bags now so we haven't tasted them yet. They sure smelled good when they were baking!One note: I soaked 6 cups of wheat berries and ended up with just over 15 cups of sprouted wheat. I guess I should have weighed out 1 1/4# as you said, lol. Oh well, if they aren't edible, the dog and chickens will have a treat! I have a fifty pound bag of wheat berries so I'll certainly try again. My wheat looked just like yours yesterday but today had little hairs popping out and I thought I detected a slight sweetness so maybe that was the problem?

Excellent and detailed comment. It helps me to trouble shoot with you. If there is a hint of sweetness it usually won't work. I've tried it many times that way and never once had it raise well. Just something with the state of the wheat at that point. I give a tip in the trouble shooting section, but I'll tell you here, if you only soak the wheat 24-36 hours and proceed without it sprouting, it will work just as well, if better. It's technically not called "spouted wheat" at that point, just a "mash" but it does still give you very wonderful whole grain bread. Depending on your altitude you may need to add an additional teaspoon of yeast. Chilling the wheat berries as directed will help very much with that gummy texture of the dough. Thank you for leaving a comment. It lets me have a chance to help if I can. Best wishes with the rest of the wheat. Let me know if I can help in any way.